The world’s rockets shown to scale

Tyler SkrabekInspired by a book and poster from 1995, titled "Rockets of the World," graphic artist Tyler Skrabek has provided a new and updated "clean" look for his latest work.

"The 'Rockets of the World' poster emulates a 1960 style of drawing," he said, "employing a consistent pallet across all rockets allowing for a distraction-free look at the size and power of the world's greatest machines."

Skrabek told Universe Today that he's been working on this poster for 3 months, but he's had the idea of creating it since 2012.

"The 'Rockets of the World' poster is something I put a lot of work into," he said, "as it's been my sole project for the last 3 months. Three years ago I was just interested in rockets and wanted to see how the most popular rockets stacked up against each other. But when I looked online to see if I could find a chart, all that existed were height comparisons using technical drawings with 3D renderings of newer rockets squished in. There just weren't any posters that I could find that used consistent 3D full color renderings and that's what I set out to create."

He wanted an uncluttered look for his poster, and therefore used a set of rules to eliminate some rockets: The Rocket had to have more than 3 successful flights and each rocket had to be unique - no later versions from the same rocket family, such as the Soyuz.

Also, rocket wannabes didn't make the cut … not yet anyway.

"Just to keep things tidy I choose not to include rockets that haven't flown yet on the off-chance they don't actually make it off the ground," Tyler said on reddit. "But rest assured there will be a version that includes the Falcon 9 Heavy as soon as it does."

A few months ago he created the "Rockets of Human Spaceflight" poster and posted it on reddit. He took suggestions from fellow redditors to create the final version, below. He used that poster as the impetus to continue the Rockets of the World poster.

Tyler SkrabekYou can see the original "Rockets of the World" illustration from physics professor Peter Alway's 1995 book "Rockets of the World" here.

Tyler said he's always been passionate about space, spaceflight and human exploration in space.

"I find it fascinating that we as a society have the power to take a person, put that person inside a metal box on top of a cylinder filled with explosives and explore space," he says on his website. "As an active member in space circles, I realized there was a lack of infographics that did a reasonable job of portraying comparisons between the various types of spacecraft while being visually appealing. I decided to research and develop a series of infographics to better explain this to the everyday person."